1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bar code printer, and more particularly to the bar code printer being capable of printing both bar codes and desired character strings.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been proposed bar code printers that print bar codes representing a diversity of merchandise. Such bar codes are in wide use as a method of source marking by using the Japan Article Number (JAN) in Japan and Universal Product Code (UPC) in U.S. Ordinarily bar codes are printed using specially designed printers which use print elements that form the bay codes in dot print patterns.
Recently, managing large book stocks in libraries, and large stocks of magnetic medium (magnetic tapes, floppy disks and the like the use of which has increased rapidly with the popularization of office automation), has been performed using computers. Attaching bar codes, printed on the specially designed printers mentioned above, to magnetic media or books, and reading the bar codes with a bar code scanner attached to a computer has been quite helpful in the management of these items. However there has been a problem with conventional bar code printers in that they can only print bar codes. To magnetic media and books with the bar codes attached are usually also attached strings of characters, for example alphanumeric characters, which people can read without using special equipment. However, because conventional bar code printers can only print bar codes, a separate printer is required for printing strings of characters, requiring the purchase of both a bar code printer and a character string printer.